The Tao of Sex in Ancient Asia
By Khadijah Caturani

When I ran the idea for this article by my sexual philosopher friend Deepak Patel, he became excited, asserting without hesitation: “Yeah, you become a little more godlike each time you don’t cum; it’s like my soul releases and expands into my body.” And when you do? “When I do, I become a little more empty like part of my soul leaves my body.”

Sound crazy? Or can you relate? Either way, for thousands of years, Taoists and Tantrics have been saying the same thing. Before late-night Cinemax and internet porn, Asian men learned how to have sex—good sex—through manuals. These were the “pillow books” of Taoist China. Want to have a lifetime of mind-blowing sex while satisfying your lover easily just through your breath? Want to stay hard for hours and learn to have orgasm after orgasm… without ejaculating? The answers aren’t in a wonder-pill or workout regimen. They are to be found in books, some of which are over two thousand years old.

My journey through these texts began as I parted the bamboo screens at the Museum of Sex’s exhibit, “Sex Among the Lotus: 2500 Years of Chinese Erotic Obsession.” Curator John Vollmer grabbed my interest from the first panel, which showed a couple outdoors in a bamboo thicket. The woman leans back, held aloft by a female servant, her feet bound and her aroused body left exposed by her open garment as her lover approaches her, erect. The next panel translates the accompanying text, which I came to learn was a quote from the Huaying Jinzhen or Variegated Positions of the Flowering Battle, a famed late-sixteenth-century “pillow book.”

In a secluded corner of the garden unbridled passion reigns. Hand in hand the lovers had set off into the garden; then they could not withstand the temptation of this shadowy spot. Leaning against the tall bamboo they engage in the tender discourses of love. Then, in the green shadow, she raised her golden lotus feet, and the jade bamboo began thrusting…

My crimson cheeks hidden by a thick bamboo screen, I paused and marvelled. The lovers and the servant were all smiling, the representations of human forms were realistic and arousing, and the text, though flowery, inspired my envy. I was already jealous of the ancient Chinese, who received these pillow books upon marriage, or when entering a couple’s house as a concubine.

	Museum of Sex Website

Vollmer explains the more subtle cultural significance of this quote: lian is the word for lotus, to repeat, and continuous. Lianzi is the word for lotus seed— zi being the word for seed or child. Thus the lotus represents the continuation of the human race through the woman. The lotus bud, representing the woman at the beginning of her sexuality, is the symbol of the feminine ideal, which quickly became the ideal shape for the woman’s foot, thereafter referred to as the jinlian, or golden lotus. A woman’s passive receptivity, ensured by the pain she would experience from walking or standing erect in bound feet, made her the ultimate expression of female energy, which we now call yin. A man’s repeated thrusting while controlling his xing, or semen, made him the ultimate representation of the universe’s male energy, which we now call yang.

Vollmer continues by bringing us deep into the sexual lives of the ancient Chinese and proving that there truly is nothing new under the sun. From gay porn to dildos, outdoor sex to bondage, any kink you could imagine is to be found in the practices of the ancient Chinese courtier. However, unlike today, where such sexual practices are considered immoral, or sinful, in ancient China they were the backbone of a healthy life and the physical representation of the universe in harmony.

The Yellow Emperor said: “My spirit is feeble and in disharmony. My heart is sad and I am in continuous fear. What should I do about this?”

The plain girl answered: “All feebleness of man must be attributed to faulty exercise of the sexual act. Woman is superior to man in the same respect as water is superior to fire. Those who are expert in sexual intercourse are like good cooks who know how to blend the five flavors into a tasty broth.”

-Fangneiji, or Records of the Bedchamber, credited to Emperor Huang-Ti, 2600 B.C.E.

It was widely believed that the man’s xing (which held all of his yang energy and all of the yin energy he had cultivated by giving women multiple orgasms) cured disease and held the energy for leadership and rightful living, or living in the Tao. The Taoist physician believed that the conservation of a man’s semen was the secret to eternal life. Sun S’su-Mo, the most prominent physician of the T’ang dynasty (618-906 C.E.) claims in his Priceless Recipe: “When a man squanders his semen (xing), he will be sick and if he carelessly exhausts his semen he will die. And for a man this is the most important point to remember.”

The ancient Chinese Taoists had sixty-four hexagrams in their I-Ching, or Book of Changes. These represent the eight elements: earth, heaven, rain, fire, wind, thunder, lake, and mountain. How and where these elements interact with each other represent the ever-changing state of the universe, and of human life. This seemed oddly familiar to me, and so I looked up the number 64 in The Encyclopedia of Sacred Sexuality.

Sure enough, there it was, the conspiracy theorist’s wet dream: sixty-four positions and arts in the Kama Sutra, sixty-four arts of Hindu Tantra, also represented by sixty-four aspects of the great goddess, Devi, and sixty-four arts of Tibetan Buddhist Tantra, represented by sixty-four channels emanating from the navel (the center of all energy). I actually managed to impress John Vollmer with this little revelation—he said he’d never made the connection and would definitely look into it.

I left Vollmer to navigate my way through the labyrinth of Powell’s Bookstore, which had over one hundred books on Tantra, three hundred on the Kama Sutra, and, oh, four on Taoist sexuality. I found that Taoist sexual teachings were apparently the oldest, dating back to at least the time of Jesus Christ. I read that:

Around 750 A.D. Pu K’ung, a Chinese traveller, is reputed to have taken Tantrism to China where he is regarded as the father of Tantric Taoism. He learned about Taoism in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). However, Taoism predates even the Kama Sutra and the Chinese Taoists’ knowledge of sexual matters was already highly developed before the concept of Tantra ever entered China.

-A Beginner’s Guide: Tantric Sexuality by Richard Craze

I learned that the Kama Sutra came second, being written somewhere in the fourth century C.E. in order to compile all of the sexual mores of India that had been spread around in different texts since the fourth century B.C.E. Reading the Kama Sutra cover to cover, I found almost no relationship between it and the other texts—the Kama Sutra had an entirely different ethical compass. Rape is fair game, and the obtaining of underage girls (and boys) is outlined in rich detail. The author releases himself from any responsibility by saying that he is just reporting what he has heard. On the other hand, the notes on scratching and biting should be heeded. That stuff is just hot.

I found it interesting that all three disciplines—Hindu, Buddhist, and Taoist—centered their sexuality around a goddess: the Taoist goddess, Xiwangmu, finds her counterpart in the Hindu goddess Shakti and the Buddhist goddess Tara, the mother of all Buddhas. This goddess-worship clearly results in the placement of feminine joy at the center of all sexual activity, whether it is to obtain her yin energy or to free the warrior goddess Kali and set fire to the male ego, thus enabling his union with the goddess Shakti.

All three disciplines also outline the same basic actions: to attain the achievement of unity with one’s partner and the harmonizing of the self with the universe through sex. This means literal mind-blowing orgasms, where your body explodes into a stream of white light and you can climax for hours on end. In Tantra, it is known as the achievement of asana. Through the prescribed steps, the two partners practicing Tantra are able to see themselves in one another, thus relating more deeply to one’s inner self and finally seeing that “I am she and I am he”—the ego is dissolved.

In his seminal 1977 text, The Tao of Love and Sex, Jolan Chang calls his pre-Taoist sex “masturbating in vagina” and tries to answer the skeptic’s question, “What is sex like without ejaculation?” by answering the question, “What is ejaculation like?”

Surely the answer to that question is that ejaculation is a release of tension in an explosive way. Like a shout of rage or a burst of laughter or…

If that is true, then I say that sex without ejaculation is also a release of tension but without the explosion. It is a pleasure of peace not of violence, a sensuous and lastingly satisfying melting into something larger and more transcendent than oneself. It is a feeling of wholeness, not of separation; a merging and a sharing not an exclusive, private and lonely spasm.

Beyond that, it eludes words.

Reading this, I was shocked into a re-assessment of the Taoist way. I realized that just because they did not explicitly talk about a union with “God” or “Goddess” didn’t mean that they lacked an understanding of the divine. Here was a perfect expression of the Tantric union, the ultimate connection and ego dissolution that was both awe-inspiring and terrifying. The paradox of human existence enacted in a dance between equals and opposites, between Shiva and Shakti, Vajrasattvam and Vajragarvi, yin and yang. Are we ready for it?

Images Courtesy Museum of Sex, New York